NEVERS is an acoustic electro-acoustic duet toying with sources. The duo finds common ground between Gross‘ mixing board, cheap microphones, radio, small speakers, feedback and Cooper’s high pitched, machine-like percussive vocabulary on the ancient chinese guzheng. Nevers performs in intimate spaces where each gritty detail of bowed strings and vibrating wires can be heard acoustically.
Both Cooper and Gross have toured internationally, collaborating with the world’s finest improvisers, and both have had their fare share of organising festivals and concerts over the past 7 years.

Born in 1979, Jean-Philippe Gross lives and works in Metz (France). Before turning to electronics he was playing drum in different rock bands. Since 1998 he plays improvised electronic with a mixing board, cheap microphones, small speakers and analog synth. His work is primarily focused on feeback. He is collaborating with various musicians, among them with Will Guthrie, Ferran Fages, Xavier Charles, Agnès Palier, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Arnaud Rivière. He is also a member of power free noise band Maelstrom with Arnaud Paquotte and Michel Oury. He creates sound/music for dance and theater. In 2004 he made the soundtrack for Radiographie, a theater piece by the company Les Patries Imaginaires. In 2003 his work was part of the exhibition 33 RPM: Ten Hours of Sound from France at the San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA, USA) curated by Laurent Dailleau. He has also played with John Hegre, Silent Block, Norbert Moeslang, JazKamer Metal Line-up, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Utah Kawasaki, Kazushige Kinoshita, Katsura Mouri, Stephane Rives, Frederic Blondy, Jack Wright, and Clayton Thomas. Since 2001 he is engaged as a program curator in the association Fragment (Metz, France).

Born in Sydney 1981, Clare Cooper is now based in Berlin (Germany) after running the NOW now festival of spontaneous music and film for the past 7 years.
During her years in Sydney, Cooper has had the pleasure of working with with Internationally acclaimed Australian improvisers as well as minimalist ensemble the Splinter Orchestra, the Scott Horscroft Ensemble, songwriter Darren Hanlon, Hip Hop producer Unkle Ho, and Australian pop groups Sun, Prop, Gelbison and Inga Liljestrom. Cooper is currently performing with her ensemble Hammeriver (Chris Abrahams, Christof Kurzmann, Tobias Delius, Werner Dafeldecker Tony Buck and Clayton Thomas), Nicholas Bussmann and Martin Brandlmayr’s Kapital Band 1, her science/fiction duo Germ and Pin Pin Pin trio with pianist Magda Mayas and percussionist Steve Heather.

Nevers Live in Lyon 2008

Tech requirements:

2x tables, 4x chairs, power access
We perform acoustic in an intimate space (no more than 40 people in the audience)

JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS

JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS

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CLARE COOPER [photo: G.O'Malley 2005